do not speak to us
of history
in this place
do not speak to us
at all.
seven
pilgrimages
in seven years
& already i wonder
if this journey is my journey
at all.
***
the city walls
pulse with a language
understood only
by those
who have just been born
& those about to die.
the city gate opens,
i close my hand
over my mouth
one last time.
the ghosts of the city
were everywhere that night
cascading down escalators
sleeping in doorways
of houses all over
the eastern suburbs.
you sat in a hot portable classroom
staring at interesting cloud formations,
still seven songs separating
your ghosts from mine.
we stayed for days
on the underpass
watching mechanical music
fall from the sky
watching cars spill onto
the streets beneath us.
unimaginable colours
marbled across
dashboards and windscreens
you held
all ten fingers
up to the sky
a highway semaphore
i imagined
what radio waves
might haunt
the crisp clean air
around us.
we played ugly politics
and we played beautiful politics.
we debated
thoughts
that had not even
been formed yet
and they moved through
our bodies
like shadows
passing behind coloured glass.
i wrote
and you erased
two simple codes to
obfuscate
the same meaning,
soliloquies
that we could not anticipate,
let alone control.
i awake
with a nose bleed
on a train
that does not stop.
the whole carriage
of commuters
are whistling
the same strange
song
all around me,
a symphony
of blood letting.
your fingers
cluster
around my collarbone,
a necklace
of invisible veins.
***
tall ships
in a distant
harbour,
you don’t even
hear your phone
ring.
***
i remember
seven or eight
places
that existed
before you.
a love letter
written in braille
-for your fingers only-
provides the map
to an economy of shadows
where we trade words
instead of numbers
and the ones we don’t believe in
are always worth the most.
a row of coke bottles
stand to attention
stand in
the formation
of ten pins
you ask me to
step outside
and i remind you
that there is no out side.
out side
does not exist.
we are momentarily distracted
by the reassuring sight
of a couple waltzing
on a deserted railway platform.
dusk.
the hour that things
begin to
turn around.
a single airplane
dangles
behind a haze
of overhead wires
we take our weapons out
the moment it passes.
in this war
everything
must be interpreted
as a warning sign.
i wouldn’t have called it an epiphany, but it was one of those illuminating moments. one of those moments where somehow objects can speak to you, but people cannot.
violet was already more than half an hour late. i was half an hour into a warm flat beer. over the years i’d grown fond of this ritual of ours. the same table every time, the same view of the church across the road. violet arriving as one schooner has turned into three and i am glowing as much from expectation as i am from the alcohol.
well, well.
you haven’t changed a bit, harry
the words sigh from her mouth, scraps of hair and earrings and shopping bags float all around her.
i sense her body relax as she slides onto the bar stool, long fingers clasping around a cold glass of beer, the stress of the day- the week- slipping away into the periphery.
what have you brought for me this time?
a glimmer of a smile flashes coyly across my face.
the dance has begun.
what makes you think i have anything for you?
violet takes up my cue effortlessly.
well,
i let the words ooze out from between my lips,
in all the years we’ve been coming here, i’ve never gone home empty handed…in one way or another…
i don’t see why this year would be any different. besides, i know you, i know you couldn’t stop yourself…
ha!
her wild eyes flick a sideways glance at me, a look that brings a familiar tingling across my skin.
well, i might as well get it over and done with, you asshole…
reaching into one of her bags.
coming in
to taiwan
the lights
of the city
are probably
a film projector
trained on a wall of clouds
it is impossible to get
good staff
in this country
you confide in me
through pursed lips
a half-peeled mandarin
in your hand.
and i imagine,
that for you,
it is.
we drove through desolate
pop art landscapes
for the good part of the day
our conversation drooled back and forth
without punctuation
or cadence
and we came close to achieving
extraterrestrial beauty
in those brief exchanges.
she seemed to just
fall
into music,
notes touching
her fingers like
after
thoughts.
i opened
the tiny cabinet
of her chest
and found a
joseph cornell
arrangement
of peculiar objects
sitting
beneath
the skin.
instruments
for recording
the sound a
memory makes
when it
fades away.
gadgets
for amplifying
the hum of
brain waves
whenever they think about
sex,
or death,
or the impossible.